Last Episode of Think TV Airs Friday

KERA announced that it is canceling Think TV and eliminating six positions at the station, due to uncertainties about the economy, federal funding.

CTA TBD

The last episode of the Think TV show will air this Friday. And that, of course, means no more Art&Seek segments of Think. KERA management announced the show’s cancellation and the elimination of six positions at the station this morning, citing uncertainties about the economy and federal funding. (Read KERA’s statement here.)

Since 2007, Krys Boyd has hosted Think TV, a spin-off of her popular radio interview show which you can, of course, still hear on KERA FM Monday through Thursday.

About two years ago, Art&Seek was invited to participate in the TV show. Jerome Weeks made the jump to television and brought weekly interviews with folks making arts news in North Texas. The Art&Seek weekend calendar, voiced by Nilufer Arsala, also aired during the show.

We at Art&Seek will miss our weekly close-up on TV. We especially will miss our colleagues leaving the station. Jerome and Stephen Becker, Nilufer and our calendar editors Gila Espinoza and Therese Powell, will continue to bring North Texas arts news, interviews, event information and feature stories to KERA FM, and right here, to ArtandSeek.org. Thanks for joining us.

I am just so sad that the always informative THINK is going away, although I understand the budget cuts part. I always looked forward to seeing and hearing about public affairs and arts events and personalities in the Metroplex, where I lived almost 30 years. I even watched the “re-runs”–now that’s loyalty! Especially missed will be Krys Boyd and Jerome Weeks, who did such a great job. Maybe THINK will come back in better times?

So what programming at KERA-TV is going to be locally produced, and thus a reason to support KERA-TV vs. sending donations, if inclined, to PBS? Is the station going backwards to when the only locally produced programming was pledge breaks? KERA? The station that produced the city’s most meaningful news coverage during days of “Newsroom”? This is awful.

KERA-TV must not become simply some sort of VCR machine playing materials produced elsewhere. Surely THINK (or programming like it which reflect discussions of local issues — particularly in the arts) economically fits the mission of the station. Looking at it — even up close — I don’t see huge or even large production expenses required. I admit my bias here, but I’m unpersuaded that the station’s budget requires bailing on this quite modest effort to cover needed information in the TV format. Boo!

If everyone who listens, watches and consumes web content KERA FM, KERA TV, KERA World, KXT and Art & Seek would just join at the basic, 10 cents a day level, those fine folks would probably not have lost their jobs.

As a matter of fact, if even 20% of the people who consume all that content would join, it would almost double the station’s budget. (Right now, fewer than 10% of listeners contribute, if I am not mistaken.) Think of all the local production the stations could do then. I blame the freeloaders, 100%.

I hereby deputize all members reading this as undercover membership police officers. Bust your friends and make them pledge!!
Thank you.
Love,
The Membership Police Chief